Audit of Sacramento Police Department finds evidence of excessive driver stops

A new audit of the Sacramento Police Department finds several cases where officers appear to violate the Fourth Amendment, which, according to the United States Constitution, protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” 

The report, from Sacramento's Office of Public Safety Accountability, was presented during this week's city council meeting. Dwight White, the agency's inspector general, told council members most complaints against police had to do with officers pulling motorists over for improperly tinted windows and then searching the vehicle after detecting marijuana use. The officers are alleged to have acted with racial bias. 

“The issue here … is for the past two years the only people that complained about getting stopped for these window tint violations and search were Black and Hispanic people, mostly from neighborhoods like Del Paso, Arden and South Sacramento,” White said. 

He added these stops were usually not about window tint, but more often about what the driver was doing or where they were going. 

In response, Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester said her department is examining enforcement protocols including pretext stops. 

"We agree that our department can and must do better to meet our standards with every stop and encounter and we agree that there are evolving best practices in law enforcement and we must continually seek to adopt these," she said.

The audit also found officers engaged in automatic pat-downs of citizens, routinely entered homes without warrants and searched cell phones in violation of state and federal laws. White reported, in one case, officers handcuffed a 10-year-old girl.

"The issue here is, that was unreasonable,” he said. “She posed no threat to the people, she had her pajamas on, she was saying she was a baby when she opened the door and the officer handcuffed her and took her to the car."

Lester responded, "we can all agree, there is no circumstance where it's okay to handcuff a 10-year-old, regardless of race. And we are certainly aware of the trauma and the impacts that something like that, an interaction with police, can have on our community."

Lester says her department is committed to constitutional policing and will continue to collaborate with the Office of Public Safety Accountability.

City council will discuss more of the report’s findings during their Aug. 8 meeting.